“MAYBE HIS WORK IS FINISHED.”
From the “Dalton Argus.”
Henry Woodfin Grady died Monday morning, December 23, 1889, from bronchial and other troubles, irritated by his recent visit to Boston, where he made his last and greatest speech in behalf of the section and people he loved so well.
Since England lost her Wellington, and America her Lincoln, no greater calamity has moved a people to sympathetic tears than the death of Henry Grady. His life was the fulfillment of a noble man, and his grand impulses touched every phase of humanity. No man was ever better known to his country by an unbroken chain of rarer virtues, nobler purposes, and more powerful capacities. His work, in whatever field, was the impetuosity of patriotism. His successes stand as a mark of indomitable energy. Possessing an extraordinary faculty of grasping opportunities at the full flood tide, he illustrated the perfect patriot in forgetting self for common good, the genuine friend in bestowing his own advantages to others. Only he that worthily lives, in death enshrines himself in the hearts of his people, and not a wire in all the network of commercial arteries but that has given, in messages of love, cadences of a country’s sorrow. When poets and patriots are met at the bier by the hushed voices of the rabble, and commerce pauses to pay tribute, Heaven-blest must be the spirit that gives flight from earth. In all the walks of life Henry Grady has left remembrances that suggest homage to his worth.
But his name shall occupy a space in history, filling the brightest niche of an illustrious age, that his life shall stand out boldly in the perfect beauty of its accomplishment.
There is a touching coincidence in his death, following so closely after that of Jefferson Davis, that the funeral dirge of one almost blends into the decadence of the other, giving figure to an illustration as true as it is sublime.
Who can refute the suggestion that it was a wise decree of Providence, staying the relentless demands of Time that sectional prejudice might lose its forceful resentment, lending ear to the vigorous mind of Davis, through the very nobility of his after life; and giving communion of perfect sympathy through the pleading of Henry Grady, caught up as if from the living embers of the old, a fair type of that historic period, imbued with all the demands of the present, his patriotic ardor glowing with fire of eloquence, his dying speech giving tumult of enthusiasm in voice of advocacy, expounding reason indorsed by every Southern man?
No man better knew the temper of his people, or gave thought with riper philosophy to the issues which surround them; or was less fearless to speak the truth.